The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  “So,” he said, and slapped his knee again. He straightened his back from the bent-over position it had taken during my playing. His eyes smiled at me, this time a little ruefully. “I have enjoyed your performance very much, Gianni. You play very nicely. No, that is not correct. You play wonderfully.”

  I stammered my thanks, proud and excited and bashful at the same time.

  Slowly he shook his head and tasted his mustache again. “But I cannot take you as a student.”

  I was crushed. “Why not?”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Gianni. I can’t teach you a thing. You play far better than I could if I spent the rest of my years practicing guitar. No, don’t laugh; it’s true. I would love to have a gifted student like you, but there is nothing I can teach you. Nothing. Do you understand that?”

  I nodded my head, my eyes on the floor. I felt as if I had lost a friend.

  He cupped my chin in one vast hand and raised my face. “Don’t feel bad, Gianni. I’m sure there is something we can work out here. It will take a few days for me to do some checking, and then we will see. Do you live with your parents?”

  “With my father.”

  He nodded. “Can you ask your father to come talk with me one afternoon next week?” He reached for a tattered daybook on the table, thumbed the pages, squinted. “Could he come here at five o’clock next Thursday?”

  I hesitated, then asked, “Can my grandmother come? She lives next door to us.”

  Herr Scherer looked closely at me. “Why don’t you want your father to talk with me, Gianni?”

  Ashamed, I looked down at the floor again. In a small voice I replied, “He doesn’t like my music. He won’t let me play in his house.”

  “Your father won’t allow—” Herr Scherer cut himself off. I looked up. His face was like stone. He asked, “Do you have somewhere to practice, Gianni?”

  “At my grandmother’s.”

  “I see.” He tugged at his beard with one fist and sighed. “Well, your father must come if he is your legal guardian. Do you understand that word, guardian? I have an idea, a place where you might take your lessons, but I must first check on a few things and then speak with your father. You are very young, Gianni, so we must follow the rules very carefully. I have never tried to do this with someone so young. I have never heard of it being done. But why not? You play well enough, that’s for sure. First I must talk to some other people, and then I must meet with your father. Do you think he will come talk with me?”

  I thought about that. “Can my grandmother come with him?”

  For the first time he smiled with his whole face and showed a mouthful of disorderly, yellowing teeth. “You think your grandmother will make him come and listen to me?”

  I smiled and nodded, liking him immensely.

  He laughed, a booming sound. “By all means, have your grandmother come too. I would like to meet this lady. And your father.” His eyes clouded over. He sighed, turned back to his daybook, and made a note. “Five o’clock in a week from this Thursday, here in this classroom, yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  He smiled and held out his hand. “It was nice to meet you, Gianni.”

  Awkwardly I extended my hand and watched as it was swallowed by his. “I am sorry that you won’t be my teacher.”

  “So am I, Gianni, so am I. It would be nice to teach a virtuoso.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But it would be a foolishness for me and a waste of time for you. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, feeling slightly lightheaded. A virtuoso, he had called me.

  There was a knock at the door. We both started slightly, as though caught doing something wrong. His eyes crinkled into another smile. “So. You must tell Fraulein Rohr that I thought you played very nicely too, yes? And tell her also that I was very careful and did not bite. Five o’clock Thursday after next, Gianni. With your father and your grandmother. Goodbye.”

  Chapter 3

  Over the coming days my life split in two. On the one side was my music, where there was joy and a few friends and the love of my grandmother to sustain me. On the other side was everything and everyone else—a world that cared nothing for me at all, did not care whether I was even alive. The people of this world were either blind to me or wished that I was somewhere else. My father was there in this world, and his wife. So were almost all of the people in my school. I walked the halls as I walked the streets, alone in a crowd that seemed to look right through me. For most of my classmates I did not exist. When they did notice me, their hostility was a wall that held me out.

  Mass and church and prayer before meals with my grandmother all fell into the world of coldness and uncaring. It never occurred to me that religion could be anything but a burden to endure. But I did not often complain. To question the existence of a God who would kill my mother and deposit me in Germany upset my grandmother very much. My thoughts and feelings about God and faith I kept to myself.

  I continued to hope for the brief moments of peace during my grandmother’s evening prayers. I refused to question its origin, refused to even think about what it might be. To connect it consciously to God would have threatened its presence, and the quiet times were too precious to risk losing. So I continued to sit in the evenings with my grandmother, hoping without thinking that the peace would arrive, never asking where it came from, never wanting to know. That it came was all that mattered.

  In those early days I began studying the faces that surrounded me. I did not realize it at first, but with time I came to accept that I was searching. I walked the streets and looked into eyes that refused to see me. I passed silently through crowded school halls and watched faces devoid of light. Beautiful faces, ugly faces, faces framed by a rainbow of hair colors and eye shades and clothes. So few of the faces seemed to hold a light within.

  I wondered sometimes if I was simply growing up and seeing something that had always been, everywhere I had lived, all the places this strange life of mine had pushed me into. Other times, especially when I was sitting with my grandmother and listening to her whispered prayers and hearing the little rosary beads click through her restless fingers, I would cling to the belief that there were places in the world where people cared. Where people saw. Where eyes showed more than just a blankness inside. Where hope and joy and light and laughter really existed. When I pushed through the heavy door of our apartment house and began another day among the blind, it helped me enormously to hold fast to this belief.

  Gradually I learned to live with the coldness of my world. I wrapped myself in a blanket of lethargy, a fog that shielded me from noticing too much. There was the fog, and there was my music. I would spend hours sitting in class or walking the halls or lying in the silent darkness of my room at night, playing fantastic melodies in my mind—melodies that contained all the light and hope and joy that was absent from most of my world.

  * * *

  Nine days after playing for Herr Scherer, I returned to school at five o’clock with my grandmother and my father. Herr Scherer asked me to wait outside while he spoke with them. The meeting lasted over an hour. For a while, I stood in the hall and listened to the rise and fall of murmurs from behind the closed door. Then I walked up and down the empty hallway, scuffing my feet and clapping my hands, listening to the music in my head ringing with the echoes. Then I stood in the central passage looking out the tall glass windows at the back garden and wondered what they could be talking about for such a long time.

  When I finally heard the door open, I raced back to stand and watch the three of them come out. My grandmother was first, and the expression on her face sent shivers up my spine. A light shone from her eyes. She stood across the hall from me and bathed me with that light.

  My father’s shoulders sagged as he walked slowly from the room. He wore an expression of bewildered pain. He glanced at me and swiftly turned away, and I remembered the way he had looked at me at the train station the day I had arrived from Como.

  Herr Scherer was gr
inning broadly and showing his discolored teeth. He winked at me, then waved a sheaf of papers toward my father. “All of these have to be filled out before next Friday,” he said.

  My grandmother stepped over and took the papers. “Gianni, tell the gentleman I will take you myself to the academy on Friday.”

  I stared at her. “What academy?”

  She bathed me again with that light. “The guitar professor of the Musikakademie wants you to play for him. The gentleman has told him about you. If he likes you, he will take you as a private student.”

  Herr Scherer asked, “Did your grandmother tell you what has happened?”

  I nodded dumbly, looking back and forth from Herr Scherer’s broad grin to my grandmother’s shining eyes.

  My father’s normal grim expression returned. He turned and walked toward the end of the hall. Herr Scherer’s face became blank as he watched my father’s back.

  “I’m sorry we took so long, Gianni,” Herr Scherer said. “But your father—” He hesitated, then said simply, “Your father did not want to translate everything for your grandmother.”

  When my father disappeared around the corner, Herr Scherer turned to me and let the smile come back into his eyes. “If the professor decides to take you as his student, we’ll enroll you at the Musikakademie,” he said. “That’s the only way the state will pay for your lessons.”

  “Tell me what he’s saying,” my grandmother insisted. Numb from shock, I translated about the enrollment.

  She nodded her head, her shining eyes darting back and forth between me and Herr Scherer. “I understand,” she said. “That is what these papers are for.”

  “Take the forms with you when you play for Herr Professor Doktor Schmitz,” Herr Scherer said. “If he decides to take you he will present the forms to the academy board himself. You will be enrolled as a private tutorial student under Herr Professor Doktor Schmitz. Can you remember that name?”

  “Herr Professor Doktor Schmitz,” I repeated breathlessly.

  “You address him as Herr Professor,” he said. He leaned toward me and added with mock ferocity, “You will not be afraid of him, do you hear me? If you are afraid I will eat you myself. I have gone to a great deal of trouble here, Gianni. If the professor takes you, you will be the youngest student at the Musikakademie. The youngest student in the academy’s history, as far as anyone knows. And if you are afraid when you meet him, I will have you with my morning toast and coffee.” He pulled the edges of his mouth down. “Have I made myself clear, or should I sample a couple of toes right now, just to make sure I’ve got your attention?”

  “I understand,” I said, grinning.

  “And you won’t be afraid,” he growled.

  I shook my head. I could not believe it was really happening.

  “Gianni,” my grandmother pressed.

  Swiftly I translated what Herr Scherer had said. She looked at him, her glance shedding the same light on him that it had on me.

  “Ask the gentleman if he likes Italian food,” she said. I did so.

  Herr Scherer gave my grandmother a look of soulful yearning. “I love the Italian kitchen almost as much as I love my wife and children. Sometimes a little more.”

  “He says yes,” I told my grandmother.

  “Tell him that we must invite him over very soon and I will cook for him. Perhaps next week.”

  “And his wife,” I said.

  “Of course, and his wife. I did not know he was married.”

  Herr Scherer grinned through his unkempt beard. “Be sure and tell me the day before, so I can prepare myself. I will skip all meals that day. And maybe do some exercise. No, that would be going too far.”

  “He looks forward to coming,” I told my grandmother.

  Herr Scherer added, “And tell her that I will try to bring the other thing we discussed to the dinner.”

  I translated for my grandmother and asked, “What other thing?”

  “Nothing important,” she said coolly. “Ask him when he wants the money.”

  Herr Scherer waved it aside. “First we must see if it is possible, and if he will go easy on the price.” He glanced at his watch. “Do you realize we’ve been at it for almost two hours? My wife will roast me and serve me up for supper. Goodbye, Gianni. I am very glad this has worked out so well.” He gave a little bow to my grandmother and walked down the hall, whistling a cheerful tune.

  “A very fine gentleman,” my grandmother said. “He has done us a great service. Come, figlio mio; it is time for us to leave as well.”

  My father was waiting for us at his car. When we appeared he started to say something, glanced at me, and changed his mind. He unlocked the doors and we climbed inside, my father and grandmother in front and me behind. My grandmother reached back between the front seats and took my hand. The same light and strength that I had felt from her eyes surrounded me as she squeezed my fingers in her dry, work-worn hand.

  “So,” she said quietly, “your son has just been praised to the very heavens by one of his teachers. Is it not a wonderful thing?”

  My father did not look at either of us. I stared at the back of his head, his hair dark and neatly trimmed above his collar. “Another musician,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” my grandmother said, as quietly as before. “Fate has brought you another one to replace the one that was taken away.”

  My father threw her a nervous glance and asked sharply, “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “Look at your son,” she said softly, her voice barely audible above the noise of the traffic. “Have you ever really looked at the boy?”

  My father remained silent, his face pointed straight ahead. He started the car.

  My grandmother’s voice sharpened. “Look!”

  As though dragged forcefully around, my father turned to me. His eyes were filled with the same expression of bewildered pain that he had shown me in the school hallway. His gaze returned to my grandmother, and then back straight ahead. He put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “Can you not see it? Her spirit is alive in him; it shines in everything he does.” She leaned toward my father as he drove with hands clenched tightly to the wheel. Her voice was coaxing. “Do you not see, my son? You loved her so much it almost destroyed your life to have her taken away, yet here she is again for you. A divine gift that only a gracious God could have bestowed upon you. All that He asks in return is that you give to your son the same love and devotion you would have given to her. Is that so much to ask? Is that not what your heart yearns to do? He has given you a son who looks like her, acts like her, loves music as she did. And who needs your love as she did. Your son.”

  A pain filled my chest as if a giant had wrapped his hand around me and was squeezing all the air from my body. I could not breathe. With two swift gestures of my free hand I wiped my eyes.

  At the next traffic light my father turned to her, his mouth gaping slightly. He looked in agony. He then returned his gaze to the road. I sat and felt the thudding of my heart.

  “She is gone,” he said. The words were a groan. “And I am the cause.”

  My grandmother reacted as though slapped. She jerked back upright and pulled her hand from my grasp. “She is gone because you choose her to be so!” she snapped. “She is gone because you have never learned what it means to search your heart in prayer, to offer your sins and your sorrows up to the only One in heaven and earth who can heal you.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. When we pulled up in front of the house, my father got out and slammed his door. He walked hurriedly toward the entrance and disappeared.

  My grandmother continued to sit there, her eyes pointed straight ahead. “So much pain,” she murmured. “And for what? Who does it help to carry this pain forever?”

  “We need to get out,” I said. It still hurt to breathe.

  My grandmother seemed to wake up. She opened her door and stepped out. I followed her, and when I stood beside her on th
e sidewalk she ran one hand over my hair and down my cheek. The light was still in her eyes, but subdued now, softer.

  “I am very proud of you, Giovanni,” my grandmother said. “The youngest student at the Musikakademie.”

  “I haven’t been accepted yet,” I corrected.

  “You will be.” There was no doubt in her mind. “Very proud.”

  I did not know what to say, and so remained silent.

  “You must search your heart and forgive your father,” she went on. “It is no better for you to carry pain than it is for him to do so. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said faintly. I did not want to talk about my father.

  She sighed. “Then you must learn to pray for guidance. I am unable to heal wounds of the heart. Much as I would like to do everything for you, only our Lord in heaven can offer you this cleansing. It is a very important thing I am telling you, figlio mio. You must learn to forgive before you can know true healing.”

  I looked at the sidewalk and gave a slight nod, fighting down the storm of conflicting emotions that her words brought up.

  “You will go practice now? Good. I will stop by the Angelettis’ store for a few things, and then come up.”

  She patted my cheek again, the light glowing in her eyes, then walked away. I knew why she was going to the store. She and Mario’s mother were becoming friends. It seemed a wonder to me, that the woman who had preferred isolation to contact with the people of her own village was now becoming friends with a woman from the slums of Milano. I thought about that as I climbed the stairs to my grandmother’s apartment. I thought also about the look on my father’s face, and about the light in my grandmother’s eyes, and about what Herr Scherer had told me, and about the Musikakademie. But I did not think about what my grandmother had said I needed to do, to turn to the Lord in prayer. I did not want to destroy the glow of this moment with another flood of emotions I could barely control.

  I let myself into my grandmother’s apartment with my key. I walked through the living room and into the windowless alcove that my grandmother called a sewing room. It was my haven, a place where both my music and I were truly welcome. It was a tiny box, less than three meters across. My grandmother had hung up and tied back heavy drapes to give the alcove an illusion of separation from the living room. Cramped as it was, the little space was my refuge from the world.